Announcement

Botafogo Returns to the USYS Regional Final!

After another impressive 7-1 win to finish out the round-robin portion of the USYS Regionals in Des Moines, Iowa against Appleton Goal Getters from Wisconsin, Team Chicago Academy-Botafogo faced Michigan Football Club in this morning’s semi-final in a rematch of last year’s semi-final. A year later, and in a different location, but the outcome was an identical 2-0 win for Botafogo.

However, where last year’s semi-final was a hard-fought battle today’s game was total Botafogo dominance from the first whistle. Putting together their best performance of the Spring/Summer, Botafogo had great ball-circulation and peppered the Michigan Football Club goal throughout the game. With a little bit better finishing the game could easily have been a 5-6 goal win.

Kaitlin Johnson got the eventual game-winner in the 6th minute with a far-post shot after a great passing sequence by Bryce Banuelos and Meegan Johnston. With 10 minutes to go Katie Ciesiulka (one of 3 Santos players called up for the event) went on a decisive run down the right flank and served a great ball to Ashley Handwork who calmly tucked the ball away to put the game out of reach. Megan Geldernick earned the shutout in goal.

With the win Botafogo set up a rematch of the IYSA State Cup Final against FC United tomorrow morning at 10am. Both teams have already qualified for the USYS Nationals in Overland Park, KS July 23rd-28th as Botafogo were National League Champions so FC United will claim the Regional spot at Nationals regardless of the outcome tomorrow.